JonD
Anderton
.... Also FireWire is on the way out.......
Been hearing this for years, and guess what? The last two interfaces I bought (in 2013) are FW-based.
Of course, I'm strictly using desktop PCs with PCIe FW cards (I can see why it might be a concern for laptops).
But as long as the PCIe slot standard doesn't go away, I don't see my FW devices becoming obsolete anytime soon. 
Not being obsolete - true, FireWire devices will (should) continue to work for a long time. Thunderbolt offers PCIe card adapters, although UA's recent announcement of which PCIe cards will and will not work with Thunderbolt and adapters for the new Mac Pro are not encouraging, and the number of PCs with Thunderbolt ports is not encouraging either...there's also the question of how many slots will be in a motherboard. If you use only one PCIe device, you're probably okay but if you have other PCIe devices you want to run, there may or may not be the capacity.
In terms of being on the way out, FireWire turns 30 this year. That's pretty old for a standard, and you're right about laptops tending to leave out FireWire these days; in terms of sales, USB interfaces are waaaay ahead of FireWire. And cards aren't forever - consider NuBus and ISA.
Personally, I prefer card-based audio interfaces because they don't have to go through the layers of FireWire or USB. But they're getting
really rare.